Jeff Skinner

Jeff Skinner is a Teaching Fellow of Strategy and Entrepreneurship and the Executive Director of the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital at LBS. He specialises in commercialising early stage technologies, principally from universities and has co-founded over thirty new ventures. He teaches on several entrepreneurship courses at the School and leads many of the co-curricular activities supported by the Institute, including all competitions, the London Entrepreneurship Review and the TELL Series. Jeff also advises on national technology transfer policies, Chairs two ‘proof-of-concept’ funds, Chaired the global accreditation body for Technology Transfer professionals and a community-based charity in Tottenham.

Prior to joining the School, Jeff was commercial director at University College London (UCL), where he built its Technology Transfer division – including the creation of two seed-funds and new units to stimulate consultancy, industry engagement and spin-out creation. Working alongside senior academics, he co-founded more than 30 technology-based spin outs that collectively raised more than £30 million in first round capital. He also introduced management education for engineers and created the first Research Masters Programmes at UCL. 

Jeff remains deeply involved in technology commercialisation through teaching, consulting and speaking around the world. He chairs the Review Committee of the Alliance of Technology Transfer Professionals –the global technology transfer professional body – and is past president of the leading UK and European Technology Transfer Associations (PraxisUnico and ASTP Proton). He is author of the Leadership Foundation’s publication Commercialisation Skills for Academics and Researchers and has written more than 20 teaching case studies, covering many aspects of university technology transfer. Jeff has also spoken at TEDx. 

Before joining UCL, Jeff led technology commercialisation at Hoechst Celanese Photonics in New Jersey and was previously photonics research manager at General Electric. His first degree was in physics and he holds a PhD in thin film photonics from UCL and a MBA from LBS.

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